Welcome back to another season of our favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things. This episode we watched rich women do so many things. We watched them throw a singing party for a bunch of kids with a band called the BeatBuds, which is also the name of my favorite varietal of Indica at my local dispensary. We watched them wear ill-advised Chanel half-gloves to lunch. We watched them lie around and get vitamin IV drips and cortisone shots in their blemishes in an attempt to keep their children grounded. In a very relatable moment, we watched them spill Champagne all over their cobalt-blue Birkin and then shake its contents out onto the floor of a private jet.
As always, the season starts by showing us each of the women alone in their houses doing something very domestic and pretending like they don’t have a staff to restock the porcelain tea containers on their kitchen counters. We start with Erika Jayne, who tells us that she is so busy that she now has an office (which she calls the Club House), is working on new music, and is trying to capitalize on her moment in the spotlight. Part of that capitalization is that she is writing a book. Well, now is as good a time as any to tell you all that I am the co-author of Erika’s book. (Pretty Mess comes out March 20, 2018. Preorder on Amazon now!)
That said, I’m not going to take it any easier on Erika than I have in the past, though my ongoing love for her is well-documented. Also, don’t think any conjecture I have about the women or their behavior comes from insider scoops from Erika. To work on the book, I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement about what we talk about and we’ve all see Erin Brockovich, so you know I’m not trying to mess with Erika’s lawyers.
Since we’re going to be just as mean to Erika as ever, let’s talk about her sit-down looks. The first one we see makes her look like a Russian vampire, with a dark maroon lip, a Gothic crown, and a black jacket with shoulder pads so big it gave Joan Crawford’s corpse a hard-on. When I asked her about this outfit at Vulture Festival, she said it was inspired by a Russian vampire so, mission accomplished.
Her other outfit can only be described as Harajuku hoochie starring as the leader of a color guard for the first high school on Mars. In this look, she’s wearing a galaxy print jacket, giant blonde hair piled into two swooping bunlike structures, and a fuchsia lip circled by sparkly purple. It is not a “polite lip.†Erika hates polite lips. She prefers DSLs, which she defines as “dick sucking lips.†This makes so much sense to me now that she told me what it is. All the time boys on Grindr are telling me, “I love your DSLs,†and I’m always wondering, “How do they know how good my WiFi is?â€
Next, we go visit Chez Hamlin where Lisar is getting the aforementioned vitamin IV drips with her model daughters, Delilah and the Other One. They are administered by a hunky nurse named Dustin Manwell, who I would like to star in a homosexual pornographic movie with. He already has the perfect name for it.
Lisar is trying to convince Delilah that she needs to go with her sister to New York for a modeling gig because she can’t check into a hotel room on her own. Delilah is like, “I just got back from NYC like three days ago and I need to chill.†She is 19 years old. She should be up in NYC every chance she gets, going out at the club popping bottles and doing poppers on the dance floor, not sitting in her parents house whining about the very difficult life of a teenage model. I love Lisa’s answer to her: “Do you know what I was doing at 19? Working in a sporting-goods store.†That’s why Lisar is the best, because she furnishes her daughters with a ridiculous lifestyle and then totally makes them feel bad about it. That is every parent’s job.
After that, we find out Dorit has been living in Miami for four months while she renovates her home, Surely Rented Manor. We don’t see too much of her, but I’m starting to like Dorit a bit more already. Maybe it’s because we barely had to look at her husband, PK, a sunburned manboob on a package vacation. What I am really worried about is Dorit’s taste, namely her hair. When she shows up for the Vegas trip, Lisa Vanderpump says that she has that “just shagged†hairdo. Um, it looked more like she just got off of a motorcycle without wearing a helmet. When her hair is super-straight it looks too severe, especially when she’s always wearing some sort of pantsuit with gold glamour mesh underneath it. The best her hair looks is in her sit-down when it’s curled and swooped to the side. Too bad she’s dressed in the Mylar that an Edible Arrangement came wrapped in. Maybe she should fire the creepy twins that do her hair and makeup? I don’t know.
Lisa Vanderpump and Kyle Richards are the same. They’re working, working, working, busy, busy. Nothing exciting here. Kyle decides that she’s going to take all of the girls on a trip because all of their birthdays are clustered in July. Yes, RHOBH has metastasized with Cancers. This means that Dorit, Lisar, and Erika are all going to have to get along. Uh oh, Spaghetti-Os. So far there doesn’t seem to be much incident, though. Kyle also invited St. Camille of Grammer, always happy to make a cameo, and Eileen Davidson, who said she couldn’t make it. I have never missed a Housewife more than I miss Eileen Davidson.
Speaking of which, here is a gentle reminder of the Eileen Davidson Accord that prevents us from passing full and complete judgement on Teddi Cougar Mellencamp until she has been on five episodes of the show. But I do have some preliminary notes. First of all, Teddi rides horses. Yes, she’s an equestrian. She was just on her horse today. She’s been riding horses for decades. She loves being on horses. What does Teddi like? It’s Horses. Horses. Horses. Horses.
Also, I am not sure about Teddi’s children’s names. She has a son named Cruz, which seems to be a prerequisite for a Real Housewife, and a daughter named Slate. Slate is not a human’s name. Slate is the Crayola that you broke off in the in-box sharpener and now you can’t make the rest of your colors pointy ever again. I’m also worried about Teddi’s clothing. I have never seen someone whose clothes were wearing them more than her. What was up with that doily she was wearing in Las Vegas? Did she not watch last season? Does she not know what can happen when someone can see up her skirt on a show like this?
Yes, we’re 40 minutes into this season and there is already a trip. That is why Rich Women Doing Things is great. It’s never the most dramatic of the franchises, but they are always doing something fun and very luxurious and usually laughing while it happens. I’m totally down for that. So far, very little is happening in Vegas and everyone is girding their loins for the confrontations between Dorit and Lisa and Erika that I don’t think are really going to bloom in the way that producers are probably hoping they will.
But getting everyone on a plane to Vegas is a really good idea, even though it would have been better with Eileen onboard. I imagined a scenario where Eileen accepted Kyle’s invitation but production told her the wrong time. Eileen showed up at the private airport and was chugging along the runway in high heels carrying a rolling suitcase and a hat box waving at the plane as it pulled away. “I’m here, I’m here,†she shouted, in her husky rasp, as the captain pulled up the little gangway, leaving Eileen stranded there with the ripples of heat from the tarmac undulating up her body and the wind rippling through her hair like a million ghost fingers trying to rip off her wig all at once.